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Commentary: Newspaper Bids Farewell To Driving Force

Spring is a riot of opposites: It’s hot; it’s cold. Gardens boast new growth, but those tender plants can be slashed in a minute by wind and hail.

Graduations are well suited to this time of paradox. They represent a crowning achievement, and most graduates are ready to move onto the next stage of their lives, a sure sign that a school has done its job. However, graduates can be a little misty-eyed and nostalgic as they find themselves about to start down a new path whose challenges are as unknown as they are inevitable.

“Yesterday, I was a student. Today, I am a graduate. Tomorrow? I don’t know exactly who I will be tomorrow.”

At the Times Record, we are having a graduation of a sort as longtime publisher Gene Kincy leaves that position.

Mr. Kincy started at the Times Record in January 1994. Newspaper offices were downtown then, but that didn’t mean the paper was part of the town.

“When Gene got here, this newspaper didn’t participate in the community,” advertising director John Speck said last week. “He transitioned it into a community entity that serves readers and repays them for their purchase.”

Mr. Kincy oversaw the paper’s movement into the 21st century both literally and figuratively. A small black-and-white daily that lacked a coherent design or organization underwent a series of redesigns with changing times. The Times Record developed a website and added specialty publications and magazines. Priority was given to improved customer service, reader service, advertiser service and community service.

In 2010, when Mr. Kincy wrote a column to celebrate the Times Record’s 125th year in publication, he focused on the newspaper’s role in the community. About the town leaders who came to visit him, he said, “I knew it had absolutely nothing to do with the person sitting behind the publisher’s desk — me — and everything to do with the little newspaper that everyone depended on for leadership, guidance, communication, commerce, news, entertainment — you name it.”

In describing his time at the paper then, Mr. Kincy didn’t focus on revenue or circulation; he focused on the role of the newspaper as educator.

He recalled the 1997 sales tax election for the Convention Center, libraries and riverfront development and the newspaper’s part in voter education. He was proud of the Times Record’s role in the evolution of Westark College into the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith and in the campaign to expand the city’s water supply. A newspaper shouldn’t necessarily support every initiative a city official or chamber of commerce may propose, he wrote, but it should ensure that citizens have all the information they need “to make educated choices” — whether the issue is supported on the editorial pages or not.

That belief is part of what made Gene Kincy an easy boss for whom to work: He has a clear vision — in 20 years, a single vision — of what the Times Record should be: the premier place for people to find local news in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma. The Times Record isn’t a big-city daily. It isn’t a statewide newspaper. It is a community newspaper, and that is something to be proud of. That vision has influenced every decision I have made in the newsroom, and, I believe, it helps to create a better product every day.

I started at the Times Record eight months after Mr. Kincy, and in the last 20 years, we have seen, in the words of Bruce Springsteen, “hard times come and hard times go … just to come again.” I’ve seen Gene roll up his sleeves and do paste-up when equipment failed, and I’ve seen him hunker down in his office to make war plans when times were tough. He never deflected responsibility for the hard decisions to someone else, but he never accepted praise when things went well. “You all make me look good” is all he would say to his staff.

Over the years, I’m sure many things have annoyed him, but only two things that I could see ever really made him mad: managers who did not respect their staff and employees who did not take their job as seriously as he took his.

He instilled the idea that newspapering is a team effort. Reporters can’t tell their stories if there’s no one selling ads; ads are going to sit on the loading dock if there’s no one to deliver them; and neither the stories nor the ads will make it to the loading dock if there’s no one to run the press and keep the website going. I don’t know that staff members at all newspapers see it that way because they don’t have Gene Kincy to point it out.

I’ve known our new publisher, Tom Stallbaumer, for a number of years. He published The Morning News in Springdale when that paper’s page production was done here. I like and respect him, and I think he and Fort Smith are going to be crazy about each other.

But to tell you the truth, after almost 20 years, I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the idea that tomorrow someone else will be sitting in the corner office.

Mr. Kincy is about to celebrate his 40th anniversary with the company, Donrey Media Group when he came on board in Iowa in 1973, now Stephens Media Group. That’s a long time to tie one’s fortunes to a single organization. I’m sure there will be some separation anxiety on both sides. For me, I’ll miss someone whose personal and professional support has meant more than I can say. I hope that Gene very soon will be having too much fun in retirement to miss us, but I know that he will miss the relationship he has had with this community.

From your staff and work family, happy graduation day, Gene. Go grab the next part of your life with both hands.